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Originally posted by Ikonoclastia

I think there is plenty of room for both group and solo play. I believe the majority of developers would like to be able to attract both styles of gamer to their games without those players conflicting and without trivializing content or making content too difficult.

I think there is a solution to the problem and I think that solution is based around time to acquire content.

This seems like a pretty reasonable and very simple compromise to the issue. All items are available to all players regardless of style however time to acquire is much longer for solo players. In the example above its 4 x longer.

As most people familiar with competitive mmo's are aware, mmo's gearing tend not to be static, there is a continual and unfortunate demand for more content and better items and so last weeks uber bp is this weeks hand me down. Because of this, the soloer who acquires gear at a slower rate will always be behind in gearing despite that gear being available. The soloer will never have all the latest gear because in the time it takes for the soloer to get one item, the grouper has acquired 10 items.

One thing to remember, MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game - the word Cooperatively is not in there anywhere.

I used to play EvE Online - As Infinity Ziona , I soloed exclusively, I created Privateers, a corporation of soloers and it eventually caused the nerfing of the war system in EvE. Essentially Privateers took cooperative multiplayer tools (the corporation and the wardec system) and used it for solo play, used it so effectively that the cooperative players complained so much it was done away with. My point is that solo players can and do affect the game world even when they're not sitting, flying, swimming next to you in warm fuzzy cooperative play. They're not playing 'with you' but they are playing with you.

I don't think it ought to work that way at all, to be honest. If a group of players goes out to play, they ought to be able to handle higher-level content than someone of the same level soloing. That much is clear. They should certainly be able to get higher-level gear, based on their higher-level ability and higher-level content, but just having them get more for clearing the same amount of content, seems a bit silly. The only reason they ought to get 4x the reward is if they clear 4x the content. If they can do it, sure, go for it. If not, they shouldn't get any better reward than the soloer, assuming they are all working the same amount and level of content.

Rewards should be given for work done, not number of people standing around doing the same work.

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Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by Ikonoclastia

I think there is plenty of room for both group and solo play. I believe the majority of developers would like to be able to attract both styles of gamer to their games without those players conflicting and without trivializing content or making content too difficult.

I think there is a solution to the problem and I think that solution is based around time to acquire content.

This seems like a pretty reasonable and very simple compromise to the issue. All items are available to all players regardless of style however time to acquire is much longer for solo players. In the example above its 4 x longer.

As most people familiar with competitive mmo's are aware, mmo's gearing tend not to be static, there is a continual and unfortunate demand for more content and better items and so last weeks uber bp is this weeks hand me down. Because of this, the soloer who acquires gear at a slower rate will always be behind in gearing despite that gear being available. The soloer will never have all the latest gear because in the time it takes for the soloer to get one item, the grouper has acquired 10 items.

One thing to remember, MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game - the word Cooperatively is not in there anywhere.

I used to play EvE Online - As Infinity Ziona , I soloed exclusively, I created Privateers, a corporation of soloers and it eventually caused the nerfing of the war system in EvE. Essentially Privateers took cooperative multiplayer tools (the corporation and the wardec system) and used it for solo play, used it so effectively that the cooperative players complained so much it was done away with. My point is that solo players can and do affect the game world even when they're not sitting, flying, swimming next to you in warm fuzzy cooperative play. They're not playing 'with you' but they are playing with you.

Except it doesn't work that way. According to your example, the group plays for 2 hours and comes out with *1* item. In order to get an item for each group member, they'd have to play for 10 hours (2 hours x 5 members). The soloer gets 1 item in 8 hours, therefore gets them faster overall.

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Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by Ikonoclastia

I think there is plenty of room for both group and solo play. I believe the majority of developers would like to be able to attract both styles of gamer to their games without those players conflicting and without trivializing content or making content too difficult.

I think there is a solution to the problem and I think that solution is based around time to acquire content.

This seems like a pretty reasonable and very simple compromise to the issue. All items are available to all players regardless of style however time to acquire is much longer for solo players. In the example above its 4 x longer.

As most people familiar with competitive mmo's are aware, mmo's gearing tend not to be static, there is a continual and unfortunate demand for more content and better items and so last weeks uber bp is this weeks hand me down. Because of this, the soloer who acquires gear at a slower rate will always be behind in gearing despite that gear being available. The soloer will never have all the latest gear because in the time it takes for the soloer to get one item, the grouper has acquired 10 items.

One thing to remember, MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game - the word Cooperatively is not in there anywhere.

I used to play EvE Online - As Infinity Ziona , I soloed exclusively, I created Privateers, a corporation of soloers and it eventually caused the nerfing of the war system in EvE. Essentially Privateers took cooperative multiplayer tools (the corporation and the wardec system) and used it for solo play, used it so effectively that the cooperative players complained so much it was done away with. My point is that solo players can and do affect the game world even when they're not sitting, flying, swimming next to you in warm fuzzy cooperative play. They're not playing 'with you' but they are playing with you.

I don't think it ought to work that way at all, to be honest. If a group of players goes out to play, they ought to be able to handle higher-level content than someone of the same level soloing. That much is clear. They should certainly be able to get higher-level gear, based on their higher-level ability and higher-level content, but just having them get more for clearing the same amount of content, seems a bit silly. The only reason they ought to get 4x the reward is if they clear 4x the content. If they can do it, sure, go for it. If not, they shouldn't get any better reward than the soloer, assuming they are all working the same amount and level of content.

Rewards should be given for work done, not number of people standing around doing the same work.

I don't see why grouping with its inherent bonuses deserve any more bonuses in terms of loot.

Group Bonuses:

- increased clearing of content, more items

- Safety

- Social.

Currently games penalize people (like me) who like to solo for being antisocial, while people who are social are rewarded, when their reward is already enjoying the social aspects. Its a rather unfair system, since I don't choose to be anti-social its just the way I was born.

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I'm not anti-social, I just don't want to play with most of the douchenozzles out there. It's hard to find decent people who play the game at the same pace that I do. If I can't find that, and it's rare that I can, I just play alone.

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Originally posted by Ikonoclastia

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by Ikonoclastia

I think there is plenty of room for both group and solo play. I believe the majority of developers would like to be able to attract both styles of gamer to their games without those players conflicting and without trivializing content or making content too difficult.

I think there is a solution to the problem and I think that solution is based around time to acquire content.

This seems like a pretty reasonable and very simple compromise to the issue. All items are available to all players regardless of style however time to acquire is much longer for solo players. In the example above its 4 x longer.

As most people familiar with competitive mmo's are aware, mmo's gearing tend not to be static, there is a continual and unfortunate demand for more content and better items and so last weeks uber bp is this weeks hand me down. Because of this, the soloer who acquires gear at a slower rate will always be behind in gearing despite that gear being available. The soloer will never have all the latest gear because in the time it takes for the soloer to get one item, the grouper has acquired 10 items.

One thing to remember, MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game - the word Cooperatively is not in there anywhere.

I used to play EvE Online - As Infinity Ziona , I soloed exclusively, I created Privateers, a corporation of soloers and it eventually caused the nerfing of the war system in EvE. Essentially Privateers took cooperative multiplayer tools (the corporation and the wardec system) and used it for solo play, used it so effectively that the cooperative players complained so much it was done away with. My point is that solo players can and do affect the game world even when they're not sitting, flying, swimming next to you in warm fuzzy cooperative play. They're not playing 'with you' but they are playing with you.

I don't think it ought to work that way at all, to be honest. If a group of players goes out to play, they ought to be able to handle higher-level content than someone of the same level soloing. That much is clear. They should certainly be able to get higher-level gear, based on their higher-level ability and higher-level content, but just having them get more for clearing the same amount of content, seems a bit silly. The only reason they ought to get 4x the reward is if they clear 4x the content. If they can do it, sure, go for it. If not, they shouldn't get any better reward than the soloer, assuming they are all working the same amount and level of content.

Rewards should be given for work done, not number of people standing around doing the same work.

I don't see why grouping with its inherent bonuses deserve any more bonuses in terms of loot.

Group Bonuses:

- increased clearing of content, more items

- Safety

- Social.

Currently games penalize people (like me) who like to solo for being antisocial, while people who are social are rewarded, when their reward is already enjoying the social aspects. Its a rather unfair system, since I don't choose to be anti-social its just the way I was born.

You're penalizing yourself just by referring to yourself as anti-social. Don't let extraverts classify you in a negative light just because they neither share, nor wish to understand your personality trait. Instead of trying to understand introverts they attempt to "fix" us by coercing us into group activities...for our own good of course.

In MMO's this is represented by game mechanics (created by extraverts) that are basically ham fisted attempts to force introverts (soloers) to see the light and become "freindly" helpful groupers like them. I suppose at that point we'd start chanting, and singing hymms, all while mindlessly farming epic items for them alone (somewhat ironically this is where their idyllic portrayal of the virtues of the collective seems to fall apart).

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Originally posted by Beartosser

You're penalizing yourself just by referring to yourself as anti-social. Don't let extraverts classify you in a negative light just because they neither share, nor wish to understand your personality trait. Instead of trying to understand introverts they attempt to "fix" us by coercing us into group activities...for our own good of course.

Why would an introvert even join an MMO to begin with? It's a multiplayer game, it's there on the description, surely they know that they're going to have to interact with other people to play the game. It's like going out to a night club then complaining that people are everywhere and you just wanted to sit on your own and listen to the music. Um. Wrong place, buddy!

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Originally posted by UsualSuspect

Originally posted by Beartosser

You're penalizing yourself just by referring to yourself as anti-social. Don't let extraverts classify you in a negative light just because they neither share, nor wish to understand your personality trait. Instead of trying to understand introverts they attempt to "fix" us by coercing us into group activities...for our own good of course.

Why would an introvert even join an MMO to begin with? It's a multiplayer game, it's there on the description, surely they know that they're going to have to interact with other people to play the game. It's like going out to a night club then complaining that people are everywhere and you just wanted to sit on your own and listen to the music. Um. Wrong place, buddy!

I hate to have to break it to you, but the vast majority of players in MMO's are introverts. The anonymous nature of such an environment is more conducive to their character trait, therefore they are drawn to computer use, the internet, and online games in particular. If anything, it's extraverts who are in the wrong place, but fortunately for them the introverts are too busy doing their own thing to take the time to browbeat others into playing their way. The same claim can't be made in reverse, which brings us to this debate.

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Originally posted by Beartosser

I hate to have to break it to you, but the vast majority of players in MMO's are introverts. The anonymous nature of such an environment is more conducive to their character trait, therefore they are drawn to computer use, the internet, and online games in particular. If anything, it's extraverts who are in the wrong place, but fortunately for them the introverts are too busy doing their own thing to take the time to browbeat others into playing their way. The same claim can't be made in reverse, which brings us to this debate.

That's an old school of thought. Gamers now come in all shapes and sizes, from movie and music stars to pensioners and young kids, encompassing everything in the middle. To say the majority are introverts is an outdated concept that had gamers as lonely young men hiding in the bedroom of their parents house, covered with spots and eating pizzas every day.

And seriously, your comment about 'introverts doing their own thing without taking the time to browbeat others into playing their way'. The whole genre is turning into a single player game with a chat room, multiplayer content is quickly vanishing. The so called introverts have flooded forums asking for soloable this, better gear that, want to solo the other.. until the games end up as they are now, with multiplayer as a mini game done through small dungeons/raids or instanced PvP zones.

I'll never understand why people want to convert an awesome genre into just another single player game.

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Originally posted by UsualSuspect

Originally posted by Beartosser

I hate to have to break it to you, but the vast majority of players in MMO's are introverts. The anonymous nature of such an environment is more conducive to their character trait, therefore they are drawn to computer use, the internet, and online games in particular. If anything, it's extraverts who are in the wrong place, but fortunately for them the introverts are too busy doing their own thing to take the time to browbeat others into playing their way. The same claim can't be made in reverse, which brings us to this debate.

That's an old school of thought. Gamers now come in all shapes and sizes, from movie and music stars to pensioners and young kids, encompassing everything in the middle. To say the majority are introverts is an outdated concept that had gamers as lonely young men hiding in the bedroom of their parents house, covered with spots and eating pizzas every day.

And seriously, your comment about 'introverts doing their own thing without taking the time to browbeat others into playing their way'. The whole genre is turning into a single player game with a chat room, multiplayer content is quickly vanishing. The so called introverts have flooded forums asking for soloable this, better gear that, want to solo the other.. until the games end up as they are now, with multiplayer as a mini game done through small dungeons/raids or instanced PvP zones.

I'll never understand why people want to convert an awesome genre into just another single player game.

MMOers may come in all shapes and sizes, but on the sliding scale between extravert and introvert, the demographics of people who play these games skews decidedly towards introversion. MMO's are incorporating more solo play because that's what the majority of the playerbase wants.

Unfortunately for both personality types, there exists a push pull relationship within this genre in terms of wants and needs. I'm surprized the devs haven't tried out either a solo based MMO, or even a solo designated server within an existing one. A little compartmentalization could go a long way towards ending the acrimony.

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Originally posted by Beartosser

MMOers may come in all shapes and sizes, but on the sliding scale between extravert and introvert, the demographics of people who play these games skews decidedly towards introversion. MMO's are incorporating more solo play because that's what the majority of the playerbase wants.

Unfortunately for both personality types, there exists a push pull relationship within this genre in terms of wants and needs. I'm surprized the devs haven't tried out either a solo based MMO, or even a solo designated server within an existing one. A little compartmentalization could go a long way towards ending the acrimony.

If you're going to state demographics you're going to have to show some colorful bargraphs, pie charts, trend fluctations and at least half a dozen flow charts. Or, more seriously, something that proves your point. Just saying it doesn't make it true.

And devs have made a solo based MMO, it's called Star Wars: The Old Republic.

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Originally posted by UsualSuspect

Originally posted by Beartosser

MMOers may come in all shapes and sizes, but on the sliding scale between extravert and introvert, the demographics of people who play these games skews decidedly towards introversion. MMO's are incorporating more solo play because that's what the majority of the playerbase wants.

Unfortunately for both personality types, there exists a push pull relationship within this genre in terms of wants and needs. I'm surprized the devs haven't tried out either a solo based MMO, or even a solo designated server within an existing one. A little compartmentalization could go a long way towards ending the acrimony.

If you're going to state demographics you're going to have to show some colorful bargraphs, pie charts, trend fluctations and at least half a dozen flow charts. Or, more seriously, something that proves your point. Just saying it doesn't make it true.

And devs have made a solo based MMO, it's called Star Wars: The Old Republic.

I am stealing the gag from someone else, but haven't they got personal servers for everyone over at SWTOR

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Originally posted by Beartosser

MMOers may come in all shapes and sizes, but on the sliding scale between extravert and introvert, the demographics of people who play these games skews decidedly towards introversion. MMO's are incorporating more solo play because that's what the majority of the playerbase wants.

Unfortunately for both personality types, there exists a push pull relationship within this genre in terms of wants and needs. I'm surprized the devs haven't tried out either a solo based MMO, or even a solo designated server within an existing one. A little compartmentalization could go a long way towards ending the acrimony.

Exactly. These game companies have already done the research and make games designed to appeal to the largest demographic. In this case, it's soloers. There just aren't enough paying groupers to make it worthwhile to make a game catering directly to them. Welcome to the wild world of business.

That said though, compartmentalizing wouldn't really change anything because, based on statistics, grouping games probably wouldn't exist at all. There's just no money in it. Add to the fact that so many groupers are convinced, wrongly, that these games are "all about grouping" and anyone not grouping is doing it wrong, you're never going to solve the problem. Everyone has to group or they're being bad players, in the view of a lot of fanatical groupers.

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Exactly. These game companies have already done the research and make games designed to appeal to the largest demographic.

This is probably a good reason why so many of these games fail. If you're doing market research and trying to find the right formula that will appeal to consumers, then your goal is money and not making a game for the sake of making something you want to see come to life.

Like original EQ was born because the developers wanted to see their text MUD's in graphical format, so they went about creating it. There was no real question of whether this would appeal to X or Y, they did it because they wanted to play it and knew others would too.

Now? Most developers look at exactly what you said, market research, demographics, etc, then make a game that they think will net them the biggest amount of income. Hence the mass of WoW clones. It's so clinical and designed to sell that most of these games just lack the soul that a game made for game's sake actually has.

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Originally posted by UsualSuspect

This is probably a good reason why so many of these games fail. If you're doing market research and trying to find the right formula that will appeal to consumers, then your goal is money and not making a game for the sake of making something you want to see come to life.

Like original EQ was born because the developers wanted to see their text MUD's in graphical format, so they went about creating it. There was no real question of whether this would appeal to X or Y, they did it because they wanted to play it and knew others would too.

Now? Most developers look at exactly what you said, market research, demographics, etc, then make a game that they think will net them the biggest amount of income. Hence the mass of WoW clones. It's so clinical and designed to sell that most of these games just lack the soul that a game made for game's sake actually has.

That's a mythology that comes along after the fact. They were in it to make money too. They had bills to pay and mouths to feed and whether they were trying to make something come to life or not, their primary motivator was cash, the same as it is for every business on the planet. They weren't doing charity, they were running a for-profit company.

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Originally posted by Cephus404

That's a mythology that comes along after the fact. They were in it to make money too. They had bills to pay and mouths to feed and whether they were trying to make something come to life or not, their primary motivator was cash, the same as it is for every business on the planet. They weren't doing charity, they were running a for-profit company.

Oh sure, there's still money to be made, which is why they make it as best they can rather than 'acceptable', but it wasn't about flowcharts and market research originally. Games were made by gamers - now everyone is coming out of University with Computer Science degrees and jumping into the business for the money rather than for the love of creating something original. Big business has smothered originality, not a lot of original games coming out anymore, they're all based on a game that came before it.

The only company I can think of that still create games because they love them is, I think, IO Interactive? The company that created the Hitman games. I've seen interviews and stuff with them and they're genuinely excited about creating an idea and seeing it come together, rather than the EA style of being excited about a product that's going to rake in loads of cash.

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Originally posted by UsualSuspect

Originally posted by Beartosser

You're penalizing yourself just by referring to yourself as anti-social. Don't let extraverts classify you in a negative light just because they neither share, nor wish to understand your personality trait. Instead of trying to understand introverts they attempt to "fix" us by coercing us into group activities...for our own good of course.

Why would an introvert even join an MMO to begin with? It's a multiplayer game, it's there on the description, surely they know that they're going to have to interact with other people to play the game. It's like going out to a night club then complaining that people are everywhere and you just wanted to sit on your own and listen to the music. Um. Wrong place, buddy!

This is another myth about MMO's - Massively Multiplayer Online = Many players cooperating together is just not true. MMO = many players online together (no cooperating necessary). A Free for all last man standing shooter is an MMO and the aim of that game would be to kill everything and be the only person alive.

As I mentioned in a post a few pages back, in EvE Online I was a solo player, who roamed the universe killing other players. I did found a large corporation which later became a large alliance, but only so soloers could join and solo against the group players. While we soloed and didn't cooperatively play, we had a profound effect on the game itself which eventually forced the developers to nerf us. Obviously we were interacting with others and affecting the game world substantially. We were just not doing it cooperatively. Cooperative is an option not a requirement of any good mmo imo.

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Originally posted by Ikonoclastia

Originally posted by UsualSuspect

Originally posted by Beartosser

You're penalizing yourself just by referring to yourself as anti-social. Don't let extraverts classify you in a negative light just because they neither share, nor wish to understand your personality trait. Instead of trying to understand introverts they attempt to "fix" us by coercing us into group activities...for our own good of course.

Why would an introvert even join an MMO to begin with? It's a multiplayer game, it's there on the description, surely they know that they're going to have to interact with other people to play the game. It's like going out to a night club then complaining that people are everywhere and you just wanted to sit on your own and listen to the music. Um. Wrong place, buddy!

This is another myth about MMO's - Massively Multiplayer Online = Many players cooperating together is just not true. MMO = many players online together (no cooperating necessary). A Free for all last man standing shooter is an MMO and the aim of that game would be to kill everything and be the only person alive.

As I mentioned in a post a few pages back, in EvE Online I was a solo player, who roamed the universe killing other players. I did found a large corporation which later became a large alliance, but only so soloers could join and solo against the group players. While we soloed and didn't cooperatively play, we had a profound effect on the game itself which eventually forced the developers to nerf us. Obviously we were interacting with others and affecting the game world substantially. We were just not doing it cooperatively. Cooperative is an option not a requirement of any good mmo imo.

Your definition of MMO didnt even exist until WoW.

Even tho we have pirates and such in EVE, they work closely with other pirates, or at least have a deal with other players in an area so they wont be attacked. So to say you were completly solo, is not true at all. In fact, I can safefly say after many years playing EVE, you can never be "completly" solo, you would die fast and often. Unless you only run missions or mining in high-sec, but even that could get you podded.

When WoW came along, the first 6 months was grouping and open world pvp. Then quickly dissolved into a solo game, with raiding being the only group content.

And the MMO genra hasnt been the same since. Always catering to the solo crowd, and look at the quality of MMOs for the last 5 years, complete garbage.

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Historically MMO game design has attacked the group vs solo dicotomy by making the level grind a solo affair and endgame content group based. In an earlier post (I did not read all 100+ pages) someone referred to this as chickening out by not following through on the solo aspect through endgame. However, current themepark games have further introduced mechanisms for solo play in the endgame such as dungeon/raid queuing systems as well as daily quests. And while the former of these gives the illusion of 'group play' it really isn't. I don't think that these queuing systems are necesarily poor design, in fact I think they were a clever idea. The problem as I see it is that they introduced them with another design decision, that being cross server queuing. In order to foster true group play dynamics there needs to be a sense of community. Having cross server queuing destroys this possibility by further pushing the player into a state of annonymity.

In order to build a sense of community players need to be able to recognize one another and know who else is a 'team player' and who is not. If MMO's (especially themepark) can break down this barrier then some of their previous design decisions would start to work better to break down the dicotomy.

I'm very interested to see if GW2's approach of server vs server can actually address this issue.